‍Intro

Simply put, a minimum viable product, or MVP, is a design concept in which the most basic version of a product is released to test the business/startup idea.

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Challenge

When releasing a new product/startup product owner/founder is faced with a big challenge; what features to include in the first version of the product?

• The ones that you think are fitting,
• The ones that the customers requested
• Maybe you can add them both, just to be sure

With a big feature set, you risk investing long design and development time on features that users might not use at all.

This is where a minimum viable product comes to save the next few months, or even years, of your life.
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Solution

To start, first, develop a hypothesis; for example; 'single people will be willing to pay for a new dating app that focuses on short videos'.

Then, build an app that tests the exact hypothesis and nothing else. This app should be built with minimum resources/time and be viable at the same time.

This is what a minimum viable product is.

Outcome

In the end, with the MVP design approach, you will be able to discover if your target customer audience is interested and then pivot if needed, without working for months only to find out that nobody is interested in your solution.

With more chances to pivot, within the same budget, you will increase your chances of success -- 100% with each pivot.

In the end, MVP will enable you to take more tries and increase your chance of startup success.

Minimum viable product hypothesis examples

• Single people will use a dating app that focuses on short user videos
• New startup founders will pay for Saas analytic tool that even non-tech savvy people can use
• B2B large companies will be willing to pay for an AI CX tracking tool that automatically sends critical reports

MVP real-life examples

Basically, every major company started with some sort of MVP. 

• For Facebook, it was a connection and a personal wall

• For Google, it was a search input field with search results
• For Apple, it was a basic PC that they sold in a local computer shop
• For Amazon, it was an online bookstore with checkout

Example of an MVP process

1. Define the user audience that you know by heart, that you spend time with, and understand their problems and goals.
2. Define your main hypothesis
3. Design basic prototype in a tool such as Figma
4. Show the prototype to 5-10 people from the target audience
5. If a concept is approved start coding
6. Code the app within few weeks
7. Get a landing page template and define the main value propositions
8. Define promotion and release the basic app
9. Track main analytics metrics such as retention, engagement, and conversion rate
10. Listen to the feedback and pivot
11. Repeat until you reach product-market fit
12. Start your marketing efforts and scale marketing
13. Start automating your workflow and the whole app